CHAPTER 4
Vocal Why Today’s Customers Are Noisy

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO
Amazon.com

Insight came from a late night game of “Trivial Pursuit Goes to the Movies.” It was being played by a group of business leaders after drinks and dinner at the two-day retreat we were facilitating. The object of the game was for one team to read a famous movie line and for the opposing team to name the movie in which it was spoken and the actor who said it. The one with the most answers at the end of the deck would be the winner.

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” one team member read from the card. Before anyone on the other team could give the correct answer (Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke^*), someone on that team shouted “Revenge of the Customers!” It was a humorous response, and very prophetic! Consider the following facts:

• While 95 percent of firms surveyed indicate they collect customer information, only 10 percent actually “deploy” a change in policy based on customer feedback. And, only 5 percent of firms tell customers that they used their feedback.¹

• When thousands of customers were asked if organizations listened, 39 percent indicated companies do not listen to or act on customer feedback. Yet, 87 percent of employees and executives believed “we listen.”²

• When executives of over two hundred companies were asked if they provided a “superior experience,” 80 percent indicated that they did. However, only 8 percent of their customers agreed with them.³

• Doctors, on average, after asking a patient the initial symptom-describing question, interrupt that patient within the first 18 seconds of the answer.⁴

Lots of talking, not much communicating! Ever had a maitre d’, host, waiter, or waitress saunter up to your table and ask the ubiquitous “How’s everything?” And, even though you were unimpressed by the food, underwhelmed by the service, and annoyed by delays, you said “Fine.” Congratulations! You have participated in one of the most meaningless efforts in modern business—useless feedback solicitation with no real pursuit of understanding.

What the restaurant learned from your “fine” is not only irrelevant; it’s probably not true! The frontline employee thinks he has heard an actual evaluation of the meal and the service. The customer thinks she’s just given a generic response—“Good morning, how are you?” And, management thinks they have another happy customer.

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. When customers with something important to say don’t get heard, they get even more vocal—and louder. And when that fails, they talk with someone who will listen—their friends. Suddenly websites proliferate with customer reviews and Facebook accounts exceed 500 million people, each with an average of 130 friends.

Ironically, the storyline of the movie Cool Hand Luke featured a prisoner (played by Paul Newman) who refused to conform to life in a rural prison. Customers are registering their refusal to play along with poor service by lighting up the Internet board and getting all their friends and family to play along with them.

MOUSE TRUMPS MOUTH

Remember: Social media drives five times the impact of traditional word-of-mouth. The average post is read by 45 people.

Convergys 2010 Scorecard Research

The Impact of Customer Noise

If you went to the customer feedback section of our Service Museum, you would find a very limited display. There would be a few almost empty suggestion boxes, a survey too long to complete in less than a week, and a returns department with an iron-fisted sourpuss firmly in charge. The conventional wisdom in the halls of the museum would be that one only hears from the really happy or the really incensed customer. The fact was, the silent majority—and, a very large majority at that—made up the bulk of customers served by any organization.

Fast forward to today and you have a much higher decibel level on customer discontent. The arithmetic on the “happy customers tell three people; unhappy ones tell ten” has multiplied geometrically. As Jeff Bezos warns at the opening of this chapter, customers can tell thousands through the outreach capacity of the Internet. Today “customer-generated media,” especially via the Internet, has dramatically increased customers’ ability to tell stories about their experiences with those who serve them. This once-nerdy path has morphed into an information freeway, dramatically escalating the customer’s power and capacity to influence other customers. As author Pete Blackshaw says, “To live in a world where consumers now control the conversation and where satisfied customers tell three friends while angry customers tell 3,000, companies must achieve credibility on every front.”⁵

Who’s talking? For the first time in history (at least the first time in a long time), most customers are assertively voicing their concerns. Some research shows that of the almost 60 percent of customers having had a bad experience in the last year, 66 percent told someone at the company and 80 percent told a friend or colleague.⁶ The silent majority is no longer silent. When the pocketbook gets squeezed, customers are more vocal about letting someone know when they do not get value. Customers at the end of the 2007–2009 recession were 14 percent more likely to complain than before the recession.⁷

In another study, 79 percent of customers who had a negative experience told others about it, according to the “Customer Experience Report North America 2010” from RightNow.com and Harris Interactive. Eighty-five percent wanted to warn others about the pitfalls of doing business with that company; 66 percent wanted to discourage others from buying from that company. On top of that, 76 percent indicated word of mouth influenced their purchasing decisions.⁸

In addition to saying something, customers have another vocal tactic when they have a bad experience—they leave! Convergys reports that 44 percent of customers stop doing business immediately and another 15 percent exit as soon as their contract is up!⁹ Other researchers found that 82 percent of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience, up from 59 percent four years ago.¹⁰ Think about that. Over half of customers with a bad experience go elsewhere.

Today social media drives five times the impact of traditional word of mouth. And, now for the biggest wakeup call: the viral effect. Over 60 percent of customers who hear about a bad experience on social media stop doing business with or avoid doing business with the offending company.¹¹ This “secondary smoke” phenomenon will grow as the use of social media increases and more and more consumers are digital natives, not digital immigrants.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Vincent Ferrari decided to close his AOL account. Having heard friends describe the nightmare it could be, he elected to tape the conversation. After all, he reasoned, the phone message customers get at the beginning of the call is, “Your call may be recorded.” The simple request—“cancel my account”—turned into a nightmare as the very polite call center rep kept ignoring his request and attempted to change his mind. The more the response to Ferrari’s service cancellation request escalated to a hard-sell pitch, the more the rep sounded like a bully. This went on for an excruciatingly long time.

Ferrari was so frustrated by the call that he posted the audio conversation on YouTube. Within days the video was seen by hundreds of thousands of people. NBC picked up the human interest story and brought Vincent on the show … and, played the tape! Check out the story today on YouTube and you will be one of more than 500,000 viewers to witness what Vincent endured with AOL.¹²

Now, let’s look at the other side of this corrupted service covenant. In a blog on “The Consumerist” website, Ben Popken wrote:

For “John,” the call center employee heard on the tape, to deploy the kind of mental warfare heard on the tape, he had to be well-trained. A plain manila envelope arrived on our desk this week. Inside was the 81-page “Enhanced Sales Training for AOL Retention Consultants” manual. Upon opening, the flowchart, “Guide to a World-Class Retention Call,” fell out.

It’s amazing that the story has come this far, that Vincent could record his attempt to cancel AOL, that recording would shoot to national TV, and now, a mole has sent us incriminating company documents. One thing quickly becomes evident after reading the pages of tips and tactics. Callers are viewed not as customers, but prospects. Under the heading, “Think of Cancellation Calls as Sales Leads,” the manual reads:

If you stop and think about it, every Member that calls in to cancel their account is a hot lead. Most other sales jobs require you to create your own leads, but in the Retention Queue the leads come to you! Be eager to take more calls, get more leads and close more sales. More leads mean more selling opportunities for you and cost savings for AOL.¹³

Popken continues in his blog:

In a public statement, AOL’s Nicholas Graham claimed that John “violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care—chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests.” If this is true, then why is there such a complex system designed to thwart those very requests? Brevity thrives on simplicity.¹⁴

What’s Made Customers So Noisy

Why are customers so vocal today? There are surface reasons. For one, organizations more actively solicit feedback than before. How many surveys (snail-mailed, emailed, or phone-called) have you received in the last month? Get your car serviced and the service rep will tell you to expect a call from J.D. Power. Clerks in stores remind you of the 800-Ticked-Off number at the bottom of the sales receipts. Plus, the Internet has made it much easier to voice an opinion. Finish a transaction online and the service provider wants to switch you quickly to a survey form.

More and more companies today are trying to get an “Academy Award.” Getting on a big-deal list or winning an honor brings publicity and added revenue. Some organizations have entire units that do nothing but prepare nomination and application forms for special awards. Obviously, customer evaluations are a key part of that effort.

But these are superficial explanations for the rise of the noisy customer. The real question is: why are customers motivated to give their two cents’ worth? The answer springs from the great service covenant shift. The transformation of service from getting service through a partner-like, egalitarian relationship to becoming the “subject” of an “expert” has left many customers disenfranchised. It has fueled an assertiveness never before seen in the streets of commerce. Some label this forcefulness “restless”; others, the victims of customer venom, would call it downright dangerous. With customer participation removed from the service equation, there is more and more backlash and whiplash, and less and less of what we’d call “dinner on the ground” for customers. Let’s examine that last concept more closely.

E-SIGHT

Automating a relationship is like visiting the Grand Canyon online. It may look and sound the same, but it can never feel the same. Never take the R out of CRM (customer relationship management).

“Dinner on the ground” was code for community in small Southern towns when we were growing up. While this naturally applied to all family reunions, its most special form occurred after certain church services. “Dinner on the ground” was a super opportunity for little boys to run, holler, and pull ponytails, pretty much unsupervised since their caretakers were occupied with set-up and clean-up. For the women, it was a time to show off a new recipe; men told tales over sweet iced tea of the one that got away. Everyone went home stuffed and happy after eating way too much fried chicken and peach pie.

This “everyone brings something” event brought people closer and enabled them to feel their interdependence. It was community in its purest form. The covenant was egalitarian. It was a sad day when someone got the bright idea of “just calling Big Al and having him bring barbecue with all the trimmings.” The “expert” cook made it all much easier. It also completely removed the recipients from getting to “vote” on how it all would unfold.

Customers’ feelings about a service provider soar when they get a chance to put skin in the game. Inclusion not only captures the creativity and competence of customers as they serve with you but it also elevates their commitment and allegiance. People care when they share. Wise service providers attract customer loyalty by making the “dinner on the ground” side of service as fun, memorable, and wholesome as a church picnic. But, when bringing a lemon icebox pie is taken from the Susies and Steves and given to the Big Als, something breaks in the customer’s notion of the service covenant.

We were working in Baltimore and staying in a new hotel whose brand was touted to be the latest in contemporary hotel hospitality. Check-in was kiosk-driven. There was no front desk staff, something we value because of their capacity to help tailor our experience. Instead, there was a single person behind a circular counter in the middle of the lobby. However, it was clear this young server was more of an exceptions concierge. He was so overwhelmed with multi-tasking that he was very slow getting us checked in since we refused to use the kiosk approach. Rather than adapting to the obvious road-warrior guests he was serving, he spoke in text-message lingo and the new techno-babble. “Later, dude” replaced “Thank you”; IDK replaced “Let me find someone who can answer that question.”

The funkiness went on. The gift shop had been transformed into a collection of vending machines. The lobby bar, no doubt crafted to be high-energy, to us was actually high-noise, sending a cacophony through the lobby that made it difficult to have a focused conversation. The guest-room desk was littered with cool electronic devices but with no guides on how to use them. Even though we are early-adopters, we felt out of place and out of date as we witnessed hospitable service become hostile service.

We Are Stronger When We Are Connected

Vice Admiral Jim Stockdale was one of the most decorated officers in the history of the U.S. Navy. A Medal of Honor recipient, he served as president of the Naval War College and later as president of The Citadel. But, ask the person on the street about Stockdale, and many will remember him only as a Vietnam prisoner-of-war for over seven years or for his fifteen minutes of fame as Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 presidential campaign, when he seemed out of place in the vice-presidential debate against the polished political pizzazz of Al Gore and Dan Quayle. Few knew that Stockdale had had only one week to prepare, while the other two debaters had been preparing for over twenty years!

Before we go any further with Admiral Stockdale’s story it is important to know that we did not include it as sort of a literary intermission. Stockdale’s plight, while dramatic and extreme, has features similar to the isolation customers sometimes feel when relegated to the Internet for their service requirements. More important, the way Stockdale and his colleagues effectively coped with the circumstance has a fascinating and chilling parallel to the explosion of social media. Sue Shellenbarger writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Constantly connected via Facebook and Twitter, you may feel like you have a lot of friends. But will they be your go-to friends in a crisis? Overwhelmed by home, family and work obligations … these connections are the kind that best support health and happiness.”¹⁵ Now let’s return to the Admiral’s story.

The jet aircraft Stockdale piloted during the Vietnam War was shot down over enemy territory and he was immediately captured. He would spend the next seven-and-a-half years in the Hoa Lo prison in North Vietnam. He was one of eleven prisoners separated from the others and placed in solitary confinement in the cruelest section of the prison. Their cells measured three by nine feet, slightly larger than the average grave, illuminated by a single light bulb that was never turned off. They were beaten during the day and constrained with ankle irons at night. Despite the fact that his leg was shattered, his shoulder dislocated, and several spinal disks smashed as a result of the plane crash, Stockdale was the most severely tortured.

There were strict rules about no communication between prisoners. Isolated and disenfranchised, the eleven prisoners worked out ways to connect and communicate. They tapped codes to each other and placed their tin cups against the walls to pick up tapping vibrations. Secret hand signals, abbreviations, and acronyms communicated to one another all helped each prisoner know that, though confined, he was not alone.

Despite the fact that they were sometimes separated by an empty cell or non-adjoining walls, silent contact never stopped for more than a day before they figured out a brand new way to communicate. Their captors were puzzled and amazed by the resilience and emotional strength of the prisoners led by Admiral Stockdale.¹⁶

Like Admiral Stockdale, when customers lose their village and are isolated from service providers bent on taking the server out of service, they respond by creating their own village. When you “own” your village, you nurture it and never take it for granted—just like you might a real village with shops and parks and Main Street. With the Internet, the formerly isolated customer now has a tin cup to place against the walls to listen for tapping from their very own community.

When the service covenant is altered without our consent or contribution, customers turn their disenfranchisement into influence and, like Stockdale, subject their captors (the organization) to their will and authority. Customers now rule! And, wired customers with a bone to pick and an ax to grind are ready, willing, and able to wield that power at any merchant who shackles them with poor quality or an inferior service experience. Ask Maytag! A power blogger with over a million followers, Heather Armstrong (http://dooce.com), cut a sizeable dent into Maytag’s reputation (and likely their bottom line) simply by advising her followers to “boycott Maytag.”¹⁷ Vocal does not mean that customers speak up. It means they bring a decibel level to their voice that mobilizes others to action.

Look at the popularity of customer review sites like Yelp.com, epinions.com, Citysearch.com, and Angieslist.com; a major part of Amazon.com’s popularity is the customer reviews section of the website. Recent research demonstrates how quickly customers have turned up the volume and come to depend on others’ experiences to assist them in making decisions about which providers to choose. For example:

• 59 percent of customers use social media to vent anger about their experience

• 72 percent sometimes research a provider’s customer-care reputation online before purchasing and 62 percent stop or avoid using that provider based on results

• 84 percent consider a provider’s customer-care quality when deciding whether to do business with a company

• 74 percent choose some providers based on other customers’ service experience¹⁸

Having constructed their own community linked together around common interests, customers now have a connection with their crowd to replace the one they lost with all too many companies. The Internet has elevated the importance of the cyber watering hole to far more than what we think of as simply social media. The label “social” implies a chat room for swapping recipes and baseball trivia. But, the cyber watering hole is now the crucible for gaining a deeper understanding of matters that matter, a forum to create instantaneous communal attention to a subject of significance, and a source for staying on the cutting edge of forces that impact the community and its members.

“Vocal” is the energy behind every grassroots initiative. It is the viral feature that influences and incites just as it educates and excites. It can be a link that brings friends together like a family reunion or “dinner on the ground.” It can be a bulletin board of helpful and healthy comments that make negotiating commerce much easier and much more valuable. But, in the hands of restless, aggravated customers, it can also be a force that mobilizes frustration and channels their concern to a village of like-minded citizens. Facebook, crafted to be a place for cyber pen pals, can become “In Your Face book” and tweets can become the drumbeats that provide a wakeup call as well as a means to marshal others to track and trail.

Revering the Vocal

It is fascinating that singing has been used as an alert or warning phrase. Think of the canary in the coal mine or the saying “It’s not over ’til the fat lady sings.” When customers “sing” it can be a cry for communication. Great service providers encourage customer singing. The song is more than important feedback and intelligence, it represents the sense of community that customers have watched being gradually removed from the service covenant. That hunger for community is innate for 99.9 percent of customers.

As customers, we all enjoy the convenience of online engagement. Vocalization (via face-to-face, ear-to-ear, or word of mouse) is what makes us social animals. Furthermore, extroverts who “talk to think” outnumber introverts who “think to talk” by four to one.¹⁹ One of the most important stages in the evolution of Homo sapiens was the emergence of food-growers (not just nomadic hunters and gatherers). The grower stage led to the advancement of a social order, culture, and progress. In some ways the Internet has made us more like lone hunters again; the emergence of social media may be a manifestation of the gatherer in us seeking a voice for “singing.”

Go to

Vocal customers want to be heard and valued. Their venting to friends sometimes happens because they feel ignored or unappreciated by a service provider. Tool #7 and Tool #8 outline ways to better understand what is important to customers.

Vocal means more than simply fostering good communication. It means creating and valuing a village or community. When service providers and customers unite in the village of commerce the service covenant is strong and intact. A solid covenant requires service providers connecting with customers in a fashion that is like a partner, not a mercenary; it is more about a relationship than a transaction.

Take it from New Mexico Tea Company owner David Edwards. David was staring at bankruptcy and needed a six-month loan to get him from slow summer sales to a profitable December. An SBA loan would take months, the bank turned him down, and he needed cash fast. He turned to his customers for help. He created a clever gift card that could be purchased on PayPal—a $50 gift card purchased in the summer but held until December could be used to buy $55 worth of tea. A $100 gift card bought $115 worth. The micro-lending concept was a huge success. And the big payoff was that after David’s partnering gesture his loyal customers felt even more loyal than before.²⁰